alternate sites for French/European spaceport

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YDMtl82

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If the French space agency (when looking for a new site for their spaceport in the mid-1960s to get away from their existing site in Algeria) had not chosen French Guiana in which to put the new spaceport, would it have chosen present-day Suriname or Guyana (given similar geographies to French Guiana)?

After all, the French did investigate some sites in non-French areas like Brazil, Australia, Sri Lanka, Trinidad, and Somalia. And Italy did install a space centre in Kenya (not a former Italian colony).

For more reference, see the following page from the French space agency: http://www.cnes-csg.fr/web/CNES-CSG-en/ ... guiana.php
 
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Skyskimmer

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My guess is gabon. My guess is they wouldn't look into the indian ocean, as it's to far out of their realm.

The question I wonder will the chinese move to indonesia/malayasia
 
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YDMtl82

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Skyskimmer":1e7b5iad said:
My guess is gabon. My guess is they wouldn't look into the indian ocean, as it's to far out of their realm.

Actually, Gabon isn't a good guess, because while it's around the equator, it's on the west coast of Africa, with populated centres well to the east. Suriname and Guyana, by contrast, have generally east/north facing coasts. The whole idea is to install a space launch centre such that it faces an ocean to the east to ease equatorial launches and at the same time minimize the risk to populated areas.
 
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JonClarke

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They only looked at French Guyana because Australia decided to close Woomera. Now there would have been something to see.
 
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YDMtl82

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JonClarke":2fjbimmw said:
They only looked at French Guyana because Australia decided to close Woomera. Now there would have been something to see.

Actually, what happened was that the European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO; a multinational consortium involving various European countries that was a predecessor of the European Space Agency, or ESA) staged launches in Woomera throughout the 1960s, but decided later in that decade to move to the facility in French Guiana. This was because French Guiana was deemed more suitable to eastward geosynchronous orbits than Woomera. This move was a few years after the French space agency decided to locate their launch site in French Guiana. All this was before ELDO merged with another agency to form the ESA.

The bottom line is, an alternate site for the French to look for in the 1960s for their own needs would have to be somewhere other than Woomera.
 
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